Alexander Stuart - The War Zone - 20th Anniversary Edition

I’m playing cricket. I’m doing what she suggested, hanging out with Neil, Caz’s brother, knocking a ball about with his mates. There’s a green of sorts down behind the car park on the approach to the beach, flatter than any other spot in the village and well placed for watching for approaching problems if we decide to break for a quick spliff. Neil’s mates seem virtually subhuman, hopeless cases, but they can play cricket and Simon, whose brother’s a fucking police cadet, seems to have an excellent source of skank, no doubt recycled from the porkers’ training college.

My side’s just about bowled out when Jessie and Nick appear on the bike, rolling into the car park as I make a run, so that I glimpse them through a haze of sweat and spliff-brightened colors and think – even in that instant – that this is a setup, she’s brought him here for the sole purpose of being seen by me. She watches my movements as much as I watch hers. I slide into the wicket, wrenching a muscle in my leg, only to find that I’m too late, I’m out, my concentration’s gone, I must have walked the last two yards.

Jessie is wearing her jeans with the seat cut out and while I try to ignore her and keep my back to her, half the team is glancing her way, unable to keep their minds on the game.

‘Your sister, isn’t it?’ says the Einstein of the bunch.

‘I wish she was my sister,’ Simon says, rubbing the cricket ball against his leg.

‘No, you don’t,’ I say, trying to watch her and not to watch her. ‘Come on, let’s play!’

But my mind is working overtime, struggling through its stoned clutter to decide what it is Jessie wants me to think. She knows I’m not going to be easily convinced by a chance appearance right under my nose. Unless I’m being too complicated – but I don’t think so. I move next to Neil as we wait to take over the bowling and position myself so that I can see Jessie and Nick walk on to the beach, climb the first ridge of pebbles, then drop out of sight.

‘Fuck, you look rough,’ Neil says to me as I aim a ball of spit at the grass. ‘Are you sure you’re up to bowling?’

‘No problem,’ I say, trying to clean my mouth out by sucking air hard through clenched teeth. I can see them both now on the next ridge, against the sea. He puts his hand on her shoulder, she slips hers around his leg.

Simon nudges me on the back, passing another joint. ‘I wouldn’t want to get high with you in a boat,’ he says and laughs.

By the time I’ve had my over, Nick and Jessie have come back from the beach and climbed halfway up the hill toward the cliff, my sanity haven, she probably knows about that too – if this is all a put-up job she’d add her little twist to it, bonk him in broad daylight in my most private spot. But they disappear before they get there, they just step out of view over the edge, which makes me think for a moment how steep the hill is there, are they nuts enough to jump? That doesn’t fit with anything, though, so I cool it for a few minutes and pretend to watch the ball, then I say to Neil, ‘Yeah, I do feel a bit rough. Think I’ll take a walk. My mind’s just not there.’

Neil and the others hardly notice as I take off, walking backwards for a bit toward the car park to show I’m still interested. I stagger on to the pebbles, feeling weird, watching for Jessie and Nick, but they’re still out of sight so I may have lost them. Then I start jogging along, clumsily, lurching into dips, and I see how steep the hillside is as it becomes a cliff and realize that there’s nowhere they could have gone, they must be there somewhere. I hear a final distant whack as the bat makes contact with the ball and I see it spinning like a planet in front of me, even though it’s way off out of my range of vision, it seems to draw me on, sweeping over the pebbles, bouncing across the water.

Then I twig it – where Jessie and Nick have gone. Right on the edge of the hill, on a ledge cut out of the earth but totally overgrown now, about a hundred feet or maybe a hundred and fifty above a bunch of clapped-out beach huts, is an old wartime shelter. I’ve seen it when I’ve gone up there, but I’ve never given it much thought. It’s set right into the hillside, a low-built slab of weathered concrete with slits for windows and a clear and unassailable view of the coastline in both directions. I’d assumed people just use it to piss in now, though I haven’t needed to myself, but presumably once it was a significant strategic sentry post with some duffer with a rifle or maybe some serious dude with a machine gun defending our shores from Jerry. It’s perfect for my sister and Motorcycle Boy now, I’m amazed it didn’t occur to me before – the perfect mix of dirt and danger, the risk of being caught at it in a semi-public place. She’d like that and she’d particularly like the fact that I’m thinking about it now down here on the beach, staring up with the seagulls crapping all around me. Performance is all to Jessica; she likes an audience.

But I have to keep asking myself why am I here? She got me here, I’m sure of it. It can’t just be to drum in the fact that she and Nick like screwing. I don’t even know what I want to think. I’ve got the upper hand, I keep telling myself that again and again in my head. I’ve got the pictures. If she and Dad aren’t going to let it happen again, then there’s nothing to see, so why am I watching her? To make sure. To know. Or is it because whether I believe her or not, and I don’t, it doesn’t feel like it’s stopped? It all seems to revolve, like the cricket ball spinning, whirling into an impossible blur of motivations and possibilities. I stand under the cover of one of the beach huts and stare up. Does she really know I’m here? Is she watching me through one of the slits – would she tell Nick? Maybe they’re both making a joke of me, the prurient younger brother: ‘Oh, Tom’s just weird. It’s a difficult age. He doesn’t get any. The little voyeur.’

No, this is Jessie I’m dealing with. Nothing simple. Nothing straightforward. I think – and this is real madness now, this is just my head, this is the most desperate part of me trying to find the sanity in this situation – I think she’s led me here because she wants me to see the shelter. I think she comes here with Dad and she wants me to know that because she wants me to stop it. She can’t stop it. She doesn’t even want to, on the surface, but underneath she’s in trouble. Or maybe she’s not in trouble, but she’s not strong enough to stop it, she wants to but she doesn’t want to enough. Shit, this is all nonsense. Jessie knows her mind better than anyone on earth. She loves danger, she loves the thought of doing anything other people would shy away from, anything that says ‘Fuck you!’ to normality.

I’m here, that’s what I’ve got to concentrate on. I’m here and Jessie’s up there. If I doubled back along the beach, scrabbled across the ditch and up on to the path, I could be standing at the edge looking down on the shelter within three or four minutes. I could get closer. If I was quiet, I could peer in through one of those slits without them even knowing I was there, but Jessie and Nick don’t interest me. I know what I need now if I’m going to save us all.

I need proof. I need something even stronger than Jessie’s pictures. Proof that will scare all of us – that I’ll use if I have to.

The video camera just about registers in the dark of the shelter but it’s not much, in fact it’s impossible to make out any detail, so I probably won’t get more than shifting digital noise, but the soundtrack will do on its own. If I get one, the soundtrack will burn with the truth, they won’t be able to hear it without knowing – even fleetingly – what it feels like to be me.